Talk:1615: Red Car

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Penises: They're about this red. Now can we please, as a culture, move on? 108.162.210.206 08:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that if your penis is any kind of blue color, you are probably having a medical emergency, in which case you should be taking much more serious steps than purchasing a particular kind of car to compensate. 108.162.236.151 21:55, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Is this the first time, color is used in the comics? --Robert (talk) 09:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

No, there are a lot more comics with color Forrest (talk)09:56, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the joke is that red has a longer wavelength than cyan (nanometers of difference). Not anything to do with colour theory. 162.158.133.96 10:06, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

I'll have you know that a few nanometres make all the difference, for some people. Click here for the miracle pill you must have!
(Seriously, as stated elsewhere, it's opposites. Big car, small equipment; RGB(100%,0%,0%) car, RGB(0%,100%,100%) equipment; pH>7 car, pH<7 equipment. Perhaps an annotated colour-wheel picture in the explanation, as a visual guide?) 162.158.152.227 12:10, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
It seems to me it could also be a reference Anaglyph 3D red-cyan glasses. Bigger color difference makes things look closer to the viewer and thus larger. Wikipedia 108.162.218.47 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
sorry, I am calling this for 162.158.133.96. Big wavelength vs small wavelength. Big ph number (alkali) vs small ph number(acid). Its consistent. This is fundamentally a big vs small penis joke. In fact, think i am gonna make an edit ... Plm-qaz snr (talk) 12:53, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Although a low pH indicates a high concentration of H+ ions. In that sense, acidic is high and alkaline is low. MGK (talk) 23:12, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

The mouse over text makes it fairly clear that it's a joke about opposites. If anything could be added to the explanation as it stands, I might clarify that red and cyan are specifically colors of light. When shone on a single area (and therefor mixed) these two colors will create white light. When these colors of light are represented on a color wheel, they are placed opposite each other. So cyan and red in this sense fit as opposites, like big and small, alkaline and acidic. 108.162.227.125 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


For some reason, this made me laugh extremely hard. I've been up all night and maybe it's sleep deprivation, as it makes me do weird things, like bingewatch on several ISS videos simultaneously. International Space Station (talk) 10:56, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

There is also a common stereotype that a car's color reveals something about its owner's psychology (e.g. here). So, I think Megan is not only generalizing one stereotype but rather mixing two stereotypes, as in other comics. Zetfr 11:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Is this the shortest complete explanation on this site? -- B0xertw1n (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

3: Island (sketch) and 28: Elefino are shorter. 108.162.221.17 12:53, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Litmus anyone? --141.101.106.233 13:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


Alternative interpretation of the alt-text: the alkaline car could additionally refer to an electric car powered by an alkaline battery 141.101.91.163 22:55, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah I also felt that there had to be some more to the alt-text than just another random opposite. Maybe that's it. Or some wordplay that I don't see? -- 162.158.91.192 01:40, 12 December 2015 (UTC) A hydrogen powered car would then have a low pH due to high amounts of hydrogen... and thus be highly acidic?

I think that the contributor two items up has the right idea about the title text. Litmus is an indicator of an acidic or alkaline solution. An acidic solution turns litmus paper red, an alkaline solution turns it blue. The current explanation of the title text " An alkaline solutions is a basic solution. Thus, men that drive basic cars are compensating for their acidic penises." Does not make any sense to me. (Paw 42 (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2015 (UTC))